Introduction: It’s the Subjective, Comrades! How does psychoanalysis relate to neuroscience and neuroscientific findings? Arguably, this is but a specification of a broader question: how does psychoanalysis relate to the outer, real world, the world of science, culture, politics…? This suggests an outside to psychoanalysis: the world and its real materialities (bodily, cultural, political, economic… materialities) as opposed to a different secluded reality or universe. The latter is then conceived as something happening in the withdrawal (in a stoved heated Cartesian room[1]) of the cabinet, hence a space outside of the materialities? But to immediately shift the perspective: are these questions in the end not variants of how do I relate to the outer world? Here too, the question of a subject as something that relates to something different than itself seems to imply a radical outside, perhaps even an Archimedean point, evoking a kind of out-of-body experience, painting the picture of the subject as involving a gaze hovering over both itself and the world. Hence, I would argue, the question of how psychoanalysis relates to neuroscience, or more broadly, to materiality (or materialities), is the question of how psychoanalysis conceives of subjectivity. Regarding the neurosciences, for example, I would say, tell me how you—from the psychoanalytic perspective or outside of it—assess and situate the endeavours of the neurosciences, and I tell you how you conceive of the human being. Or still put differently: in the way one conceives of the relation of one’s own discipline and praxis vis-à-vis the sciences of materiality, one can discern a (perhaps not fully spelled out) conception of subjectivity. In this way, it is of importance too to spell out how the sciences of materiality themselves position themselves in all this. That is, would not the mainstream and common position entail denying psychoanalysis any real or actual space outside the supposedly obvious and allegedly broadly accepted materialities? So, regarding the question, how psychoanalysis relates to neuroscience, would not a neuroscientist argue, there is no outside: regarding what happens in the withdrawal of the secluded cabinet the neurons are already at work, you cannot escape the brain? In the same vein, concerning the question of how psychoanalysis relates to the world at large (to the social, the economical, the political…) the obvious statement to make is that these issues are not the mere outside of psychoanalysis. The social, the economical, the political is not the external, it not only shapes and constructs the so-called patient, but it also is the (historical) background of such a theory and practice as psychoanalysis itself. Regarding then to the subject itself, the subject hovering over both itself and the world, has this Cartesian Ego not long been declared dead? As such, for psychoanalysis, and perhaps also for the subject itself, the summoning would be quite simple: there is no outside, one cannot escape these materialities implied in the arguments above: the bodily and the political-economical. To make sure, this “there is no outside” should not be answered from a Freudo-Lacanian perspective with a “there is an outside”, but rather, with a “there is not no outside”: the speak-being can never be fully part of the world, be fully part of the alleged materialities, it necessarily is removed from itself and the world. One could try to envision this subject as a mere gaze, as nothing but the distance to both itself and the world; the radical outside of a kind of zero-level of subjectivity. Arguably, this is where one can situate Freud’s invention of the unconscious and his devising of the praxis and space of psychoanalytic cure as something equally remote and secluded; to allow this subject/non-subject to confront and elaborate the deadlocks and ordeals of being a subject that speaks, a subject that finds itself always taking back a step from itself and the world, finding and losing itself in an ever receding outside. Hence, regarding the struggle for hegemony—“it’s the economy stupid,” or perhaps more in line with the current hegemonic frameworks, “it’s the neurobiological, stupid” (explaining the human and the social, the economic, and the political in terms of the evolution of the brain)—what I want to venture is a “it’s the subjective comrades!” I will above all question in this article the first materiality, that of the neurons and the brain. That is, I’ll do this, by trying to engage with the question I opened with, how can or should psychoanalysis relate to neuroscience and neuroscientific findings? To set the stage, let me first simplify a few things and sketch out four possible positions. First, there are the post-Freudians who—almost invariably leaning on the quote of Freud that one day biology would make psychoanalysis obsolete—promote a positive relation believing that both disciplines could contribute to each other (neuroscience either backing up psychoanalysis and/or refining it, and, psychoanalysis allowing to understand neuroscientific findings or even guide neuroscientific research). Secondly, you have the post-Freudians’ critics, who basically claim that the Freudian subject, the subject of meaning, cannot be reduced/caught into the neuroscientific framework. To this a third group connects: Lacanians, I call them here, classic Lacanians, who further the post-Freudian critiques and claim to effect a more final stab into the body of neuropsychoanalysis: the split subject, not the subject of meaning, but the subject caught up between signifiers, cannot be fMR-ized. Finally there is the fourth group, I call them neo-neuro-Lacanians, who argue: yes the critiques of post-Freudians and Lacanians are important, but they’d actually open up a project of a Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis: the subject never coinciding with itself can eventually be situated through the cracks of the neurological systems themselves. But, this is not where it ends, there is still a fourth-plus-one position to sketch out:  let me claim that we should we call this the radical Freudo-Lacanian critique on both post-Freudian and neo-Lacanian projects of neuropsychoanalysis, questioning the broader questions of the statute of neuroscience itself and what this means for psychoanalysis and its subject. I hope to later on demonstrate why this is not just a fifth position; in the meantime, I reckon that you’ll surmise that the latter is the position I want to go for. To get this radical critique started I set out from a typical post-Freudian critique (position two) on Freudo-neuropsychoanalysis (position one). I.e., let us take to a quick look at the critique of Gunnar Karlsson (2010) and Brett Clarke (2018) on the so called “dual-aspect monism” of Solms and Turnbull, (2018), i.e., the idea that there is a single thing and that neuroscience and psychoanalysis are two different perspectives of that same thing. A well-known allegory often used in support of dual-aspect monism is that of several blind men brought up to different parts of an elephant and asked to describe it (Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2018; Solms & Turnbull, 2018).[2] The argument in favour of neuropsychoanalysis refer to this metaphor to argue for the need for multiple perspectives to describe the mind/body elephant: as one perspective would not allow to grasp the animal’s full nature. Gunnar Karlsson criticizes this arguing that the basic problem is that the subjective side and the bodily side (the brain) are two radically different perspectives that cannot be bridged: that of the “first person inside perspective” cannot be synthesized with the “third-person external perspective” (Karlsson, 2010, p. 52). However, is psychoanalysis not the very business of deconstructing or at least of problematizing the very statute of the first-person perspective? Je est un autre, as the poet Rimbaud put it (1954). The Freudian unconsciousness or Lacan’s Big Other point to the fact that from the moment once says “I”, one finds itself at a distance from this “I”: the inside perspective is but a construction from the outside. Brett Clarke (2018), in his turn, mounts a slightly different and perhaps more fruitful critique of the elephant allegory and the blind men: “One assumes they must in the end refer back to an overarching or common epistemological framework by which all information they have gathered can be made sense of. However, this crucial step is not described” (p. 433). Clarke is on the right track here: there must indeed be a common epistemological framework for psychoanalysis and neurobiology to be able to meet, but while Clarke does not specify what that framework is, I’ll try to do this in this chapter: the third silent partner, the marriage broker so to say, is plain, common, mainstream psychology. This will be the crux of my argument: the question of how psychoanalysis relates to neuroscience wrongfully suggests that psychoanalysis is confronted with pure, clean, and undiluted findings. I argue in contrast that the latter are only arrived at through the medium of psychological theories and frameworks. The materialities depicted, hence, are to be traced down to psychology and its conceptions of the human being. To make immediately clear, psychology, for psychoanalysis, is not an unproblematic lingua franca, their depictions of the human being are not a simple common or neutral ground for psychoanalysis and neuroscience to meet. Remember psychoanalysis is, in its origin, a critique of psychology, Freud being compelled to go against the grain of the psychological and psychiatric theories and practices of his time. But before going into the role of psychology, as the elephant in the room where psychoanalysis is to meet the neurosciences, let me briefly call the blind men back onto the stage, as Clarke (2018) wrote: “First, the blind investigators, whether touching the tail or the trunk, are gathering information with their hands—that is, in the same way, by touch, although perhaps from different angles” (p. 433). Touching the tail or the trunk, come on! Can we, as Freudians, really let this pass? With John Dall’Aglio (2024), an exponent of the neo-neuro-Lacanians with whom I’ll engage further on, it even becomes more juicy: “For one blind man touching the legs, the elephant is stiff and cylindrical; for another touching the trunk, an elephant is bendable and capable of absorbing and dispersing liquids”. Say no more! One cannot but imagine the argument, “You ask what the elephant’s trunk or tail in the metaphor can be. It is not a phallus”.[3] Here already the point can be made: dealing with post-Freudian and neo-Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis, one is tempted to ask, where have Freud, Lacan, or, tout court, psychoanalysis, gone to?   Por Via Psicologica I set out in the introduction from a typical post-Freudian critique. Let me now bring in a classic Lacanian critique of neuropsychoanalysis. Here is the argument of Yves Vanderveken (director of the 5th European Congress of Psychoanalysis entitled “The Unconscious and the Brain. Nothing in Common”):

That there are interventions on the brain that can change behaviors, modify them, is not to be doubted. This is precisely what does not cease to concern. No one denies the progress allowed by science in the medical field in general, and in the field of the brain in particular. A leap is at work, however, once we enter the field of subjectivity and the mind [mental]. Psychoanalysis will be able to reap its effects, insofar as psychoanalysis is the place of address and interpretation of that which constitutes the absolute fault that inhabits the speaking being (Vanderveken, 2019).

To assess this, I turn immediately to Dall’Aglio’s discussion of the position of Vanderveken. Dall’Aglio, in his aim to counter both post-Freudian and classic Lacanian critiques against neuropsychoanalysis, speaks of traces of disavowal: “Vanderveken recognizes the impact of the brain upon behavior but immediately dismisses any implications this might have for the mental” (Dall'Aglio, 2024). However, the first thing to do here is question the terminology of both Vanderveken and Dall’Aglio: is Vanderveken seriously putting forward “behaviour” as a concept? And is Dall’Aglio serious in taking forward “the mental” in his answer? Seemingly, as suggested in my introduction, in the troublesome relation between psychoanalysis and neuroscience, a third partner is imposing itself: psychology. That is, signifiers such as “behaviour,” “mental functions,” and “mental states,” etc., stem from psychology’s conceptual framework, which is not necessarily what we psychoanalysts are dealing with. Arguably, we, psychoanalysts, do not really do “the mental,” we not really do “behaviour”; we do not do psychology. For sure, eventually this is also the position of Vanderveken, as he rightfully puts forward that psychoanalysis is not a theory nor praxis of changing or modifying behaviours.[4] However, we should radicalize psychoanalysis as the very critique of such approaches and reject Vanderveken’s utterance that no one will deny the progress allowed by science (implying a superegotic injunction?). I’d argue that the presumed progress only makes sense within the psychological framework, for those practices that want to change behaviours, modify them. The argument of the conference presided by Vanderveken, of the unconscious and the brain having nothing in common, sets psychoanalysis apart, as an outside, to the brain and its psychology: the radical move is to reject this binary and the two alternative worlds it sketches. For, as I have put elsewhere: starting out from the truths of psychoanalysis one can only encounter the brain as something filled with the lies of psychology. As said, Dall’Aglio senses that Vanderveken still leaves a positive place for the brain and its psychologies: where Dall’Aglio argues that Vanderveken misses the implications of brain research for the “mental.” One should recall Nestor Braunstein  here, who in in his book whose title translates as “Psychology: Ideology and Science" (Braunstein et al., 1975) poses the question: what is psychology? And when psychologists most typically answer by referring to the “the mental,” Braunstein ripostes: what is the mental? as he regards the latter as equally problematic. For Braunstein the concepts of psychology always remain more or less obscure and undefined. I argue that the neo-neuro-Lacanians are always at risk to end up succumbing to the psychologizing temptation. Consider in this respect how Dall’Aglio, as does his main reference Adrian Johnston, extensively relies on authors such as Freudian Mark Solms and psychobiologist Jaak Panksepp, who both engage with the neurosciences. Dall’Aglio (2024) writes:

Based on his integration of several lines of neuroscientific research, Solms … has argued that consciousness is, in its most rudimentary form, affective. That is, it is not representational, reflective, cognitive, or declarative—such forms of consciousness are modulations of a more rudimentary affective being which experiences the pressure of feelings. Feelings signal unmet needs, either in the body or emotional needs intrinsic to the brain itself.

We are channelled in the discussion via psychological categories. To start which, consciousness is said to be not cognitive but affective. And here we trade neuroscience as underpinned by cognitivist-behaviour psychologies with neuroscience underpinned by bodily-affective psychologies. For Solms and Panksepp, conscious is but the top layer of the affective, non-declarative body with its needs (or the “emotional needs intrinsic to the brain itself”). This could rapidly be opposed, waved away with the Lacanian dictum that the unconscious is structured like a language; the unconscious is thus far from being the merely non-declarative body/brain and its emotional needs. But to give this argument more body, let us turn to Freud’s (1905/1953) elaboration of the so-called infantile sexuality theories. Even when for Freud, bodily drives and dispositions are always involved, the point of departure of the whole dynamic is thinking: the child elaborates theories, makes injunctions, proceeds logically to answer, not in the first instance bodily needs, but rather, reflective questions such as, where do the children come from, where do I come from? These are thus not in the first place affective issues, but rather, rational questions touching the very limit of reflection, declaration, or if you wish, cognition: i.e., if I am (if I am reflective, conscious of myself), how is this possible, I who once was not, and one day will no longer be; where do I come from, and where do I go to….? It is perhaps here that one should position Lacan’s statement that there is only one affect, anxiety, and that the other affects lie. At the very least, the attempt to narrow the subjective down to a discussion of cognition versus affect, the latter supposedly a hard biological, non-representational bodily kernel, does not justice to both Freud’s and Lacan’s critiques and problematizations of such views. The whole take of the neo-neuro-Lacanians however, most centrally hinges on the turn to the affect. Take another neo-neuro-Lacanian author, Luca M. Possati: “Emotional neuroscience can give an answer by identifying the DNA of human needs, objectives, and thoughts. Panksepp’s emotional systems are the fundamental schemes of action and learning, the foundation of our whole being” (Possati, 2021, p. 17). Arguably, this leaves aside the true Freudian and Lacanian subject, the speak-being lacking any foundation of its being, the subject learning nothing, stuck in its actions. So instead of the psychological jargon of needs and emotions, psychoanalysis speaks of desire, jouissance, death drive…: it paints a subject distantiated from its feelings, thoughts, and needs: or even more radical, a subject cut off from its alleged feelings, thoughts and needs as depicted by the psy-sciences. It can be observed how the psy-lingo of authors such as Solms and Panksepp on needs pushes the neo-neuro-Lacanians into deeper psychologizing waters. Possati (2021) leans on Panksepp to speak of affects as “ancient brain processes for coding values” that function as “a flexible guide for living” (p. 5). I feel like kicking in open doors here, but is not the primordial lesson of psychoanalysis that there is no such thing as a guide to live, and that is precisely there, in the absence of such a foundation, that the human subject sees light? As psychoanalysis is eventually a discipline/praxis of the impossibility of understanding, how then to align it with the neurosciences geared towards understanding? Hence, is the answer, “let us go our separate ways?” Psychoanalysis might then step in at a second time: to offer neuroscience a critical or philosophical perspective. This would be the idea that neuroscience can go a certain way, until it reaches its boundaries, there psychoanalysis could help neuroscience, as if it were a patient, to come to terms with its own limits. However, the crucial question is: can neuroscience or even neurobiology on its own go a certain way? That is, if we observe how post-Freudians, classic  Lacanians, and even neo-neuro-Lacanians all are pushed into psychologizing waters, is supposed fundamental neurobiological research capable of steering clear of these soiled  grounds?   Neuroscience Left to Its Own Devices The post-Freudian and classic Lacanian critiques of the neurosciences claim that there is something (be it subjective meaning, be it subjective lack of meaning) that transcends or surpasses the neurobiological level. The is mirrored in the idea that there is a neurobiological reality that itself surpasses the mental or the subjective, that there would be a neurophysiological level where the psyche as such is not involved. Even the already mentioned Nestor Braunstein once made this argument (to withdraw it later![5]):

The pupils constrict when light falls on the eyes, the calf extends when the patellar tendon is percussed. In these cases it can be asserted that neither conflict nor mobilization of charges of psychic energy is detected and that, therefore, not all behaviours require the activity of the entire psychic organization. (Braunstein et al., 1975, p. 60, my translation)

One could think here of the doctor with the hammer, giving a gentle but firm knock on your knee, and up goes the leg. No subject involved at this point, local reflexology bypassing higher neurological and cerebral systems that involve representation and hence, arguably, subjectivity. The claim thus could be, there is a clear threshold or barrier discernible between the physiological and the psychological/the mental/the subjective. This would justify both a clear division of labour and, perhaps, a potential meeting point of the disciplines. I.e., the idea would be that the autonomous study of the neurobiological could as such point out where precisely the representational and the subjective would kick in. The proponents of neuropsychoanalysis and the like would then argue that the older reflexological, mere physiological circuits are implied so the latter inevitably colour and influence the higher representational/subjective realm.  The opponents in their turn would deny this and argue that the subjective (the post-Freudian meaning or the Lacanian lack of meaning) emancipates itself from its base. However, looking at alleged basic neurophysiological research, it is to be observed that immediately this is framed in things such as fight or flight or similar rationales to explain the behaviour of neurons. Most typical, this is where the imaginary of evolutionary psychology enters the scene with its, in my opinion, all too limited or even fraught imageries and mythologies of the survival of the fittest, adaptation, competition, and so on—concepts moreover, if I’m allowed to speed up my argument, which are very much aligned with the neoliberal ideologies of our time. At least, the claim of a biological field independent and prior to the mental/subjective paradoxically invariably needs to be backed up by one or another psychological theory and its presuppositions transcending the realm of “mere physiology.” Hence, the idea that neurobiology could reveal us a primordial reality is not that sure; it can be suggested that we are always dealing with contaminated matter, that is, contaminated by psychology. From here a further, and even prior question needs to be asked: does the presupposition of a pure, deeper, older, mere physiological level even makes any sense? Just consider how the doctor taking out a hammer needs to frame that he/she is not going to smash the patient’s knee-cap: “I’m going to test your reflexes.” This is where the patient is interpellated by the medical discourse and called upon the adopt the scientific gaze and look, jointly with the doctor, to the effects on the knee being knocked. It is here, arguably, that the modern subject sees light: a subject that looks upon him/herself from the scientific perspective. Here we need to take a further step into the argumentation: does this not position the subject as such outside of the representational? That is, via the scientific interpellation, the subject is offered the representation, while it itself is perplexed, surprised, or even at times amused at contemplating the academic knowledge about his/her body.  There seems to be thus a certain enjoyment involved in a subject hovering over itself (I’m alluding here once again to the out-of-body experience). Here we encounter a wholly different realm beyond representation and the declarative than the bodily of Solms and Panksepp: the true psychoanalytic beyond representation is the subject itself. So when Dall’Aglio (2024) refers to the primal repressed (and relates it to the Freud’s navel of the dream as that which is beyond interpretation), he calls it external to representation, I’d argue in contrast that the Real is not that which resists representation and remains external to, but rather, it is the surplus of representation, the excess, and arguably, this it is (the core of the) subject itself. This subject is hence not the “I” or the Ego of Dall’Aglio arising from the “contradiction of natural substance,” rather, it is then what remains at a remove from both the I and the bodily and the natural. At least, looking (from a critical psychoanalytic point of view) at neurophysiological research, the alleged clear and delimited boundary between the physiological and the subjective rapidly deconstructs itself. It could be furthermore suggested that the gentle but decisive action of the hammer resulting in the involuntary rise of a body part, still could have other connotations… I’m a Freudian after all! Hence Kinet and Bazan (2010), promoters of neuropsychoanalysis, ask the wrong question: “Is it still possible today to investigate questions of memory, consciousness and unconscious processes independently of their physiological correlation?” First of all, the terminology of memory and (un)conscious processes already signals a gliding of into psychology, thus their suggestion “no psychology without physiology” should be reversed: “no physiology without psychology”; neurobiology cannot be a primary science. To give an example: the notion of the so-called “mirror neurons” as welcomed in some psychoanalytic milieus[6] hinges on the questionable concept of “empathy” and the highly speculative suggestion that “mirror neuron system dysfunction may underlie a self–other matching impairment, which has previously been suggested to account for autism” (Williams, 2008, p. 73, my italics). It must be clear, the psychological notions buttressing the concept of empathy, talking about the conduct or cognitions of the individual in relation to another individual and their emotions, are not without problems for a psychoanalyst. Thus, when the early Braunstein wrote that “nothing and no one should oppose the reductionist program” (Braunstein et al., 1975, p. 60, my translation), I think the problem is that there is always a first reductionism, that of psychology, reducing what happens between humans in simple and one-dimensional terms such as empathy, conduct, cognitions, and emotions. To showcase this further with the idea of empathy, commonly described as the base of prosocial and altruistic behaviour and explained in bio-psycho-evolutionary terms: empathy serves the passing on of one’s own/the kin’s genetic material (see for example Lamm & Tomova, 2018). As empathy is thus believed to be the biologically and evolutionary determined royal road to potential harmonious relations, it is miles removed from how Freud and Lacan conceptualize human relations starting from the absence of alignment and harmony, suffice to refer to Freud’s seminal work on Civilization and its Discontents. The neurosciences, however, when wanting to make sense of brain structures and their workings, most readily take the shortcut to the simplifying stopgaps of psychology, those answers that silence and suffocate real and complex subjective and social matters. So we can dismiss the picture of a neuroscience or neurobiology going on its own a certain way and only at a given point stumbling to its limits or failures of understanding. It should be clear, the failure is there from the very beginning. From here a double conclusion enforces itself, not only the idea is flawed that neuroscience could come to the aid of psychoanalysis, also the suggestion that psychoanalysis could step in to come to the rescue of neuroscience is fallacious. Of course, should we not consider, together with Dall’ Aglio (2020), such critique of neuroscience as being guilty of conflating neuroscience with neuroscientific discourse, as it would only be the latter that gets stuck in totalizing imaginary traps by mapping the brain? However, as David Ferraro (2022) makes clear: for a Lacanian, discourse does not come on top, it is part and parcel of science. Science is discourse. There is no prior or pristine field on which then a second layer of discourse (and ideology) is laid (see of course again Braunstein et al., 1975). I add to this productive remark that the discourse a priori involved in neuroscience is psychology. The ”hey, but wait” utterance should now not be that far: “Hey, but wait, if neurobiology inevitably involves the psy-sciences, can we not envision a neurobiology starting from the Rolls Royce of the psy-sciences: that is, the subtle, cautious, rich, and complicated theorizations of psychoanalysis?” Adrian Johnston (2009), for example, claims that psychoanalysis could provide the neurosciences “with a rich and sophisticated metapsychological theory” (p. 32). But, is this possible, could psychoanalysis offer the raw material for neuroscience research? That is to say, isn't the risk that, to make the difficult and abstract theoretical concepts of psychoanalysis (such as the unconscious, the death drive, the beyond of the pleasure principle, etc.) manageable for the neurosciences, a psychologization of the gold of psychoanalysis is needed in order to transpose it rich and sophisticated negative notions into positive, objective, and quantifiable platitudes? At the very least, it can be observed that the neo-neuro-Lacanians, precisely in drawing all too uncritically upon post-Freudian neuropsychoanalysis, insufficiently assess the risk of psychologizing psychoanalysis. Let us take a final tour through the neo-neuro-Lacanian universe in order to demonstrate the difference with what, in my opinion, a radical Lacanian stance should be.   Neo-neuro-Lacanians Not Wanting to Be Duped

Psychoanalysts can … learn immensely valuable lessons about how meanings are created and processed in the intact mind by carefully studying and making psychoanalytic sense of the ways in which these meaning-generating mechanisms are distorted in people with brain injuries. (Yovell et al., 2015, p. 1529)

This is the answer of post-Freudian neuropsychoanalysis to critics such as Blass and Carmeli who in their “The Case against Neuropsychoanalysis” claim that psychoanalysis is “a domain concerned with meanings, to which neuroscience cannot contribute significantly” (Blass & Carmeli, 2007, p. 21). Clearly, this idea that psychoanalysis is the praxis of “the understanding of meanings” (Blass & Carmeli, 2007, p. 19), is far removed from a Lacanian perspective. What is central in the latter is how the subject is inevitably confronted with the absence of meaning: the Freudo-Lacanian unconscious is actually that which distorts meaning, what lacks meaning, and from there, that which fuels a desire for meaning, opening up to the subject of this desire. Now, this is precisely what Dall'Aglio (2020), starting out on Ansermet and Magistretti, takes forward to discuss “the possibility that the impossibility (that is, the gap, the Real) is considered within the neurosciences” ( p. 4). Could this be a viable path? Where psychology aims to be able to chart and model the human being (models then taken forward by neuroscientists to underpin the neurobiological), Lacanian psychoanalysis, in contrast would offer conceptualisations of a split subject (a subject never arriving to itself), a negative psychology to then be traced down to the neuroanatomical, neurochemic, neurofunctional domains? However, the first question is, when Dall’Aglio (2020) claims that the “slipping out of the subject must be situated within the brain itself”—and more in particular, in the “cracks, short-circuits, and negativities” (Dall’Aglio, 2020, p. 7) of the brain—why should this be the case? Why is it mandatory that everything should be traceable in the brain? Let me approach this as follows: if the argument is, and here Dall’Aglio follows Adrian Johnston’s central point of his “Transcendental Materialism” (Johnston, 2008), that  from a fundamental rift in Nature—in Nature more than in Nature—something different arises and autonomizes itself (culture, language, subjectivity…), why then, I’m inclined to ask, should the impossible (let me rephrase this as the symptomatic) be phenomenologically traceable in Nature as such? If something autonomizes itself, why would this dimension then not be able to have problems and symptoms in its own right, in its own autonomous domain. Clearly, this is not what Dall’Aglio argues for; rather, he goes for a parallelism:

There is no outside of reason; there is no meta-language. The real is an internal limit, an internal impossibility … . On the essential role of gaps in neuro-plasticity, Ansermet and Magistretti … make a similar argument: the organism appears ‘genetically determined to not be genetically determined.’ The anorganic slipping out of the subject must be situated within the brain itself. (Dall’Aglio, 2020, p. 7)

However, does this not boil down to putting forward a metalanguage after all: namely biology? The fact that we cannot escape language, and eventually are duped by this as it robs us from a firm ontological ground, must be, according to this reasoning, visible, finally, in the brain. The brain as the one ring to rule them all? Even if the ring is shot through with cracks and negativities, its reign is absolute. Or, if in our human (inter)subjectivity nothing is fixed or predetermined, if everything is without ground… all this groundlessness seemingly must be grounded in biology, albeit in a biology or in a Nature that is considered instable (hence the stress on things such in neuroplasticity and epigenetics). I am inclined not to buy this. Again, if a field (language, culture, subjectivity…) autonomizes itself, why should then the problems and the symptoms in those field not be simply the problematic and the symptomatic within the field of language, culture, and subjectivity as such: with even no single reflection, afterglow, or trace in the domain from which it has emancipated itself from? But if one would be willing to adopt the paradox, the idea that the rifts in the lingo-cultural-subjective field are situated in rifts of the brain itself, there are more compelling reasons to reject this. Firstly, the rejection of metalanguage by Dall’Aglio described above is actually based, I argue, on accepting another metalanguage. The reader will already understand what I’m hinting at, but let me make this case via the following quote of Dall’Aglio (2020) in which he refers to Adrian Johnston:

Johnston … proposes that the brain itself should be understood as divided by recognizing a neural non-relation. He emphasizes the split between non-representational, subcortical affective structures (i.e., brain structures concerned with affect which are fundamentally without representation, language, or imagery, but which still produce the pressure of feeling) and neocortical declarative structures (i.e., structures responsible for language, representation, reflective cognition, etc.). (p. 8)

So we have the split subject (never coming to itself, never coinciding with itself, the subject of its own desubjectivitation, the subject being its own antagonism…) as the result of a split in Nature, and this warrants the neo-neuro-Lacanians to promote biology as the subject’s final reality for which the scientific assessments of Nature offer us an equally final meta-language. However, in the quote itself we witness how the biological supremacy is based on that other already amply discussed metalanguage: psychology; that is, via the presupposed non-representational realm of affect, the psychology lingo enters the scheme. Put differently, the split Subject (the realm of psychoanalysis) is linked to a split Nature (what according to Dall’Aglio and Johnston should be the vista of neurobiology) via psychology:

This work builds upon his dual-aspect monism as the philosophical position for neuropsychoanalysis … . Simply put, the brain does not cause the mind, and the mind does not cause the brain. Both are incomplete perspectives of the same ‘thing’ in nature, the ‘mental apparatus.’ (Dall’Aglio, 2020, p. 8)

This “dual aspect monism” of Solms, as re-appropriated by neo-neuro-Lacanians, puts forward a possible relation between the subject and the brain via a third thing, the mental apparatus, hence, via psychology. Here I’m driven to the question, to what purpose finally? What is the agenda of moving Freud’s split subject via psychology to the absence of harmony in nature? Why is Lacan’s “there is no sexual relationship” to be moved to the brain allegedly being without harmony, or as Dall’Aglio puts it with Johnston, “there is no intracerebral relationship”? Is this an attempt to move the skandalon of psychoanalysis to the saver, graspable ground of biology? In this way the Lacanian Real is only secondary, it only repeats, or better, it is but the afterglow of the Big Bang in Nature. To counter this, I’d suggest we’d follow Lacan in his being all for Saint John and his “In the beginning was the Word”:

… but this beginning was completely enigmatic. … It’s only after the Word is made flesh that things start to really take a turn for the worse. Man no longer looks like a dog wagging its tail or a courageous masturbating monkey. He doesn’t resemble anything anymore. The Word devastates him. (Lacan, 1974, pp. 19–20).

Or, I’d argue, it is the Word that retrogradely splits Nature. The split in language, culture, subjectivity is not a result nor afterglow of a demonstrable split Nature. It is only in the relating of the Fall to the advent of the Word that the human subject as such can be situated, as the being that does not resemble anything anymore, different from tail-wagging dog and the masturbating monkey. The attempt to make the human being resemble to anything, to its alleged needs, unconscious affects, passes over psychology, and thus eventually turns it into a psychologically tail-wagging dog or masturbating monkey. One cannot but note here that the Transcendental Materialism of Johnston, as has been noted before, is rather closely aligned with some strands within the so-called New Materialism and their not making the difference between things, animals, and human beings.  The conception of the human being as a speak-being, central in the Lacanian perspective, in this way moves to the background for the neo-neuro-Lacanians. As such, when Lacan (1974) says he completely agrees with Saint John, asking “But where was it [the Word] before the beginning? This is the truly impenetrable mystery” (1974, p. 19), one could argue that New Materialism as well as Transcendental Materialism claim to jump over the mystery, as they do not tackle the enigma of the primordiality of the Word. Regarding Dall’Aglio and Johnston: what is thus not addressed is that, if there is a basic rupture or impossibility in both Nature (allegedly primordial) and Subjectivity (allegedly secondary, as it results from the rift in Nature), would it then not be obvious that the bridge which should span the two banks, necessarily itself is ruptured, and impossible? Hence, is not the baseline of the neo-neuro-Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis that it is the story of not wanting to be duped, harbouring the illusion that one can bypass the Real? One could ask if this is why Adrian Johnston claims a denomination of his position, calling it Transcendental Materialism, claiming a new different perspective capable of overviewing both subjectivity and (weak) nature. While I’d argue that it is in contrast worthwhile to remain within the awry mono-purview of psychoanalysis, one can note that Dall’Aglio goes along in asserting the newness of the double perspective of Transcendental Materialism, abbreviating it to TM, turning it into a trademark. Consider what Dall’Aglio (2020) writes, boiling down to, I argue, an attempt to bypass the absence of a metalanguage.

Neuropsychoanalytic dialogue is a space of open possibilities at the level of an exchange of concepts … . To achieve this, one must first frame the brain from a psychoanalytic perspective. By establishing bridges between psychoanalytic concepts and neural functions, one can then observe relationships between psychoanalytic concepts through their neural manifestations. One can then return to the psychoanalytic field with new possibilities of relationships between concepts observed at the neural level. As Solms (2013) maintains, neuroscience is not the ‘final court of appeals’ for psychoanalysis. The theoretical soundness and clinical utility of conceptual relationships suggested by neuropsychoanalytic dialogue must be judged within the clinical practice of psychoanalysis. (p. 13)

For Dall’Aglio allegedly psychoanalysis is opening possibilities to go to and fro between Nature and Subjectivity, crossing the Styx to arrive at the non-representational bank, armed with its concepts to “reframe” there neural functions (Johnston [2009] speaks of psychoanalysis’ “rich and sophisticated metapsychological theory” apt to be deployed in the service of the neurosciences) (p. 32), to then return safely home. Johnston and Dall’Aglio in this way envision a phenomenological approach of the Real possible: charting and tracing concrete manifestations of the impossible Real on a bodily, neurological level. Should we not firmly oppose this, answering this with a radical situation of the Real beyond the phenomenological? For, a naïve reading of the Lacanian Real would be that it is that what can’t be symbolized, that what one cannot put into words, hence remaining at the site of the bodily and the affective; as an excess of materiality….[7] However, a radical Lacanian reading is, I claim, that the Real is not what defies symbolization, rather, the Real is the very excess of the symbolical itself: that which runs rampant at the level of the symbolical, the nonsense of language, the obscene, the symptomatic; that which keeps on writing itself, that which in my speaking I can’t contain, that which defies my mastery, my Ego…. This constitutes another phenomenology, even, arguably, another materiality, another objectivity: that of the famous Lacanian objet a. Elsewhere I have argued that the objet a is what the so-called “materiality of the signifier” is about, referring it back to one of Freud’s patients obsession  with a shine on the nose (Freud, 1927/1961), or Lacan’s discussion of the  “duvet on the forearm of a woman,” evoking a shiver with the person who sees this as the “pure manifestation of her existence” (Lacan, 1962). How, on earth, would you by the way set up a neuroscientific experiment in which one would induce this shine on the nose or the duvet on a forearm experiences in order to then take an fMRI? I guess you hear me coming: this only becomes possible by psychologizing such subjective liminal experiences, reducing them to phenomenological events, cramming them into the rickety vessel of psychology, and, thus, betraying the very shiver of the subject. Not only Dall’Aglio’s proposed “exchange of concepts” risks to involve the stowaway of mainstream psychology, but this exchange is already operative in neuroscience as such. That is, neuroresearch or experiment’s point of departure inevitably is one or another psychological concept or theory, the latter then operationalised in certain stimuli (be it images, a little story, questions, etc.) which are then correlated to brain regions, neurotransmitters, or other neurodynamics. From here one returns to the psychological field with, to paraphrase Dall’Aglio, new possibilities of relationships between concepts: this is where all sorts of conclusions, or better, speculations, are made regarding the mental. For example: operationalizing the “social” (social relations/interactions) in fMRI-experiments lead to the conclusion that the frontal cortex is heavily involved. In the meantime, other studies map other psychological concepts onto the frontal cortex: for example, “lesion studies and functional imaging experiments suggest that [executive function] skills rely heavily on the frontal lobes” (Blakemore & Choudhury, 2006, p. 301, my italics). Then, after the high-tech part (involving fMRI-machinery and sophisticated and heavy computing), high speculation can begin: “There might be functional dependency between the development of EF and social interaction” (Moriguchi, 2014, p. 1, my italics).  And from here further links to neuropsychological “disorders” can be ventured: “Executive dysfunction may explain some key characteristics of ASD, both social and nonsocial hallmarks” (Leung et al., 2016, p. 1, my italics). As indicated, all the italics in the above quotations are mine, they showcase the heavy speculative aspect of neuroscience. Of course the argument could be that Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis would cater for a more serious base, so that the high speculation of psychologized neuroscience would be traded with a careful consideration of the data . Surely we can filter out the unnecessary and uncareful psychologizations? However, does this not paint the picture of scientists entering the psychoanalytic cabinet wearing masks and goggles to collect pure, uncontaminated pieces of the Real which then could be delivered safely to lab, only a bit a patience is needed until the computing has been done? Once the results are on our desk, it is our turn to first consider the possible conceptual relations to then test them in the clinical practice. Contra this imagery, I claim that this goes against the true grain of Freud’s metapsychology: that is, the latter is the search at a theoretical level for a foundation of psychoanalytic practice. That is, as Adrian Johnston interestingly summarizes Richard Boothby’s book Freud as Philosopher (2001), psychoanalysis makes it possible to observe “factual evidence” of its theories, not by attempting “to derive them from an observation field supposedly purged of all prior assumptions and mediating notions, but by first properly establishing its meta-level foundation” (Johnston, 2001). It is only theory that opens up our specific field of psychoanalytic observation, understood as involving the discursive and the social exchange. The brute empirical field needs to be disclosed by theory, it itself cannot but be a convoluted mess not allowing any evidence based or psychologised neurotechnic understandings, and this is, I claim, an argument against Johnston’s and Dall’Aglio take to suppose neuroscience’s  unmediated and phenomenological access to the Real of Nature. But am I not bypassing that Dall’Aglio provides a two-step security check and points out that the clinic itself is the final ground for decision?  However, what is to be rejected in this argument here is this strange redoubling: that of Real of the flesh, and the Real of the clinic. I’d argue that there is but one place for the psychoanalytic Real, that is, the clinic, where the Word is made Flesh. The latter then is perhaps to be understood as a decentred Flesh: not the flesh of the material body, but the Flesh of the devastated human, to retake Lacan’s words, the human that “doesn’t resemble anything anymore.” If the latter could be reframed as a zero-level of subjectivity, as the effect of the entry in language, why cling to the idea, as the neo-neuro-Lacanians do, that this pure negativity should be phenomenologically observable in the reality of the flesh (with a little f). Instead of repeating here my main argument—that the flesh with the little f is only an imaginary construction based upon the mirages of a positive psychology (positive in the sense that it misses the negativity of the subject)—  let us take a closer look how neuropsychoanalysis claims to re-cross the river Styx and bring the knowledge of the “Real” back to the clinic. Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou present a case study featuring a woman who has a history of sexual abuse in her childhood but who has no memories of this trauma. She enters analysis with Yovell with the desire to recover her memories; however, as this desire is not fulfilled, neuroscientific research is mobilized, allegedly allowing the analysand to let go her desire and surpass her deadlock:

If the analyst considers the possibility that, after two years in therapy and given the circumstances of her life, Ms. A did not remember her abuse because the memories were not there in a coherent, declarative form in the first place, then a new avenue opens up in therapy. Telling her that she might never be able to remember her abuse although she is still affected by it, and explaining to her why this might be the case, as Ms. A's analyst ultimately did, relieved her anxiety and her sense of shame and guilt to a significant degree. (Yovell et al., 2015, p. 27)

What is shared with Ms. A. is neuroscientific research on how, under certain emotional conditions memory systems may falter and thus certain events simply are “not encoded in the brain” (Yovell et al., 2015, p. 23). Note the return of the speculative in the quote above: things “might” have been the case. Moreover, is the two year in therapy-limit not a very arbitrary guess as being a proof that the final reason of that the failure of remembrance is brain based? Be it as it may, that is considered a marker where some psycho-education, or more precisely, neuro-education should be mobilized: sharing with Ms. A the latest results of neuroscientific research. Elsewhere (De Vos, 2012, 2016) I have argued that psychologization and neurologization are core practices of mainstream psy-sciences and psychotherapies: this is where the so-called lay person becomes a pupil to be educated and to be theoretically induced in the scientific findings on the human being. That what you experience is what according to psychology/neuroscience is…. I’ve called this the scientific interpellation (with an echo of Louis Althusser), interpellating a subject to become the object/subject of the (neuro)psy-sciences. However, would not a psychoanalytical defence of Yovell’s move (to explain his patient the workings of the brain), be that it could be understood along the lines of Freud’s “Constructions in Psychoanalysis” (1937/1964)? Freud theorized the technique of construction in order to think about a problematic point in the logic of repression. That is, Freud found that when all associations seem to lead to a certain content that would be the central link of the psychic process, that surmised link often cannot be made conscious. He thus had to propose that the content had never been conscious in the first place. Freud argues that here the psychoanalyst should resort to a construction of a purely logical moment in the dynamics of repression, something not deducible from phenomenology, but nevertheless logically necessary, and offer that to the analysand. The well-known example here is Freud's elaboration of a child's fantasy centring around the image of "a child is being beaten." Freud ‘s analysis reveals the origin of the fantasy in the person seeing the father hitting another child. From here Freud postulates another logically intermediate step that leads to the final fantasy:  i.e., for Freud, to go from the observation that the father hits a child to the fantasy “a child is being beaten,” a transition must be presupposed: i.e., the formula “my father hits me,” so radically unconscious that it cannot even be remembered (Freud, 1919/1955). However, it is clear that this complex Freudian logic does not guide Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou. Freud pursues the internal logic of fantasy, a subjective logic that is discursive and symbolic and that ultimately points to the subjective destitution that we have encountered before. In contrast, Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou leave the singular and subjective dimension behind to turn to biophysiological generalities with the aim, they claim, of avoiding and rectifying any subjective destitution: the attempt is, as they write, to alleviate anxiety, shame, and guilt of the analysand. Psychoanalysis as the practice of psychoneuro-education, so that the “patient” would understand his or her ordeal, to be relieved from anxiety, shame, or guilt?[8] Seriously? Is psychoanalysis not in the first place the practice of a subject confronting its own not-understanding, and from there, possibly, en surplus, repositioning itself vis-à-vis his or her anxiety, shame, and guilt? As one of my psychoanalytic tutors once said, “Never, never rob a person from his or her guilt, that’s what the psychologists do.” And they do this por via psicologica, i.e., they pull the subject out from itself, interpellating it to look at itself via the scientific gaze, to hover over itself, over the ontological gap, so as to allegedly, be no longer the dupe of being itself. The latter positioning is what I claim the neo-neuro-Lacanians risk to be caught in. Even though they accept a fundamental rift (in both Nature as Subjectivity), they nevertheless claim a point of view that would from a distance transcend the gap, as if they were not duped by the ontological gap. The central argument I’ve made is that psychology is needed to claim the oversight.   Conclusions: The New Rat Is the Brain Freud, as well known, spoke of three impossible professions or fields: psychoanalysis, education, and politics. Regarding psychoanalysis, one could argue that the denial of the impossibility of dealing with psy-matters is what psychology is all about. Is not the radical conclusion that the antagonism between psychology and anti-psychology is precisely the signpost of modern subjectivity itself? This the subject as being essentially but the subject of its own demise, as indicated above, the subject of desubjectification as such. The patient of Yovell et al., with her hole in her memory, knows she has traumas but can’t remember them; this is what is played out in the transference to the analyst. Yovell’s short-cut to education (Freud’s second impossible profession), i.e., educating her into the knowledge that the brain can’t reproduce that which hasn’t been recorded, is meant, as Yovell writes, to sooth her anxiety, her shame: in the end Yovell wants to cover up of the wound. What is silenced there is the question, to use the wordings of Giorgio Agamben (2002), “What does it mean to be subject to desubjectivation? How can a subject give an account of its own ruin?” (p. 142). It has to be noted that Dall’Aglio does not mention the case of Yovell at all, but rather, a similar case described by Larry Sandberg (2016), of an analysand who believed her mother had sexually abused her. Sandberg’s central claim is that neuro-scientific research on memory and trauma (specifically that hippocampal damage due to early trauma impacted declarative memory systems) helped him to understand things, but that nevertheless, “the interpretation made no reference to her brain or brain research” (Sandberg, 2016). However, reading the all too short vignette of Sandberg, which does not mention how or what interpretations were made, in the end I’m again struck by how post-Freudians tend to get rapidly enmeshed with psychologizing and therapeutizing tendencies (as is in my opinion the case with Sandberg). As such, translating neuroscientific research on issues as “(non)declarative memories,” which are arguably terms which do not make sense for a Lacanian, into “useful” information and inspiration for psychoanalysis in my opinion will get bogged down in psychologizations, which will most logically chime with the psychological base that originally informed such research. Until further notice then, I claim that Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou’s neuroeducational take shows us the true dynamics of a neuropsychoanalytical inspired practice. Is not the problem with the neo-neuro-Lacanians, that, while they do acknowledge the subject of desubjectivation, they miss the radical anti-psychological consequence of this? As they’d argue that the very impossibility (within both Nature and Subjectivity) might constitute the bridge between Nature and Subjectivity, they negate the possibility that the bridge itself cannot be but impossible. Wanting to be on top of the impossibility, not wanting to be duped by the Real itself, they are carried away (propelled by a kind of fear of missing out, of being irrelevant) putting forward psychoanalysis as a possible partner, missing that in this movement psychoanalysis is turned into yet another psychology. To make sure: Dall’Aglio (2024) in his paper does nod to the specific Lacanian logic of representation as he situates the Real “not as an external substance that resists symbolization but as an impasse immanent to the symbolic.” But what he does then not point out is how this could be related to the central concept of Transcendental Materialism of Split Nature; would he concede that “In the beginning was the Word” is what splits Nature? Nor does he elaborate on how neuroscience would have access to that impasse immanent to the symbolic; we are left in the dark  as to how his “neuronal real opens onto … the psychoanalytic real.” Solms’ “dual aspect monism” becomes with Dall’Aglio a dual “ontological antagonism”: “A viable bridge between neuroscience and psychoanalysis can be sought at points of ontological antagonism (the neuronal real, the psychoanalytic real) that are articulated through formal limits, impasses, or contradictions within each discipline’s epistemological framework” (Dall'Aglio, 2024). We can only surmise that the Lacanian Real, as centrally related to language and the symbolical makes transcendental materialists put forward a more original Real, housed in Nature as such. However, the viability of the bridge is invalidated in my opinion in the fact that the very epistemological ground of the neurosciences inevitably and inescapably is psychology, and the latter is the fake bridge of psychologization in which, Lacanian or not, neuropsychoanalysis gets bogged down. The extensive reliance on Solms and his take on “mammalian homeostasis and affective consciousness” (Dall'Aglio, 2024) offers a point in case: in this psychologistic affective cognitivism it becomes clear what is lost in psychologization: it is, as always, the subject, here the subject as speak-being. If once the key critique against behaviourism was that it dealt with rats instead of people, it seems that the new rat is the brain.

Bibliography

Agamben, G. (2002). Remnants of Auschwitz. Zone Books.   Bazan, A. (2011). Phantoms in the voice: A neuropsychoanalytic hypothesis on the structure of the unconscious. Neuropsychoanalysis, 13(2), 161–176.   Blakemore, S. J., & Choudhury, S. (2006). Development of the adolescent brain: implications for executive function and social cognition. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47(3–4), 296–312. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01611.x   Blass, R. B., & Carmeli, Z. (2007). The case against neuropsychoanalysis: On fallacies underlying psychoanalysis' latest scientific trend and its negative impact on psychoanalytic discourse. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 88(1), 19–40.   Boothby, R. (2001). Freud as philosopher: Metapsychology after Lacan. Routledge.   Braunstein, N. (2020). La pandemia y la psicología de las masas. Psicoanalítica, 10. https://doi.org/10.25009/psi.v10i0.2571   Braunstein, N. A., Pasternac, M., Benedito, G., & Saal, F. (1975). Psicología: ideología y ciencia. Siglo Veintiuno Editores.   Clarke, B. H. (2018). A cat is not a battleship: thoughts on the meaning of “neuropsychoanalysis.” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99(2), 425–449.   Dall’Aglio, J. (2020). No-Thing in common between the unconscious and the brain: On the (im) possibility of Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis Lacan, 4.   Dall'Aglio, J. (2024). Lacanian reflections on the neuropsychoanalysis debate: From epistemology to ontology. European Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10(3).   De Vos, J. (2012). Psychologisation in times of globalisation. Routledge.   De Vos, J. (2016). The metamorphoses of the brain: Neurologization and its discontents. Palgrave Macmillan.   Descartes, R. (1996). Discourse on the method and meditations on first philosophy (D. Weissman & W. Bluhm, Trans.). Yale University Press. (Original work published 1637)   Ferraro, D. (2022). The problem with neuropsychoanalysis—a reply to John Dall’Aglio. Psychoanalysis Lacan, 5.   Freud, S. (1953). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: vol. VII (pp. 123-243). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1905)   Freud, S. (1955). A Child is Being Beaten. A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perversions In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: vol. XVII (pp. 175-204). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1919)   Freud, S. (1961). Fetishism. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. XXI, pp. 149-157). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1927)   Freud, S. (1964). Constructions in analysis. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: vol. XXIII (pp. 255-270). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1937)   Garrett, J. (2002). The blind men, the elephant, relativism and absolutism. Introduction to Philosophy: Home Page. https://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/elephrel.htm   Johnston, A. (2001). Richard Boothby, Freud as philosopher: Metapsychology after Lacan. Journal of European Psychoanalysis, (12–13). https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/richard-boothby-freud-as-philosopher-metapsychology-after-lacan/   Johnston, A. (2008). Žižek's ontology: A transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity. Northwestern University Press.   Johnston, A. (2009). Affects are signifiers: The infinite judgment of a Lacanian affective neuroscience. Nessie, 1.   Kaplan-Solms, K., & Solms, M. (2018). Clinical studies in neuro-psychoanalysis: Introduction to a depth neuropsychology. Karnac Books.   Karlsson, G. (2010). Psychoanalysis in a new light. Cambridge University Press.   Kinet, M., & Bazan, A. (2010). Psychoanalyse en neurowetenschap: de geest in de machine. Maklu.   Lacan, J. (1962). Le séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre IX: L’identification, 1961–1962.   Lacan, J. (1974). Conférence de presse du dr. Lacan. Lettres de l’École freudienne, 16, 6–28. (English translation consulted: Press conference by Jacques Lacan in Rome, 29 October 1974. Freud Quotes. https://freudquotes.blogspot.com/2015/08/press-conference-by-jacques-lacan-in.html)   Lamm, C., & Tomova, L. (2018). The neural bases of empathy in humans. In Neuronal correlates of empathy (pp. 25–36). Elsevier.   Leung, R. C., Vogan, V. M., Powell, T. L., Anagnostou, E., & Taylor, M. J. (2016). The role of executive functions in social impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Child Neuropsychology, 22(3), 336–344.   Malabou, C. (2012). The new wounded: From neurosis to brain damage. Fordham University Press.   Moriguchi, Y. (2014). The early development of executive function and its relation to social interaction: a brief review. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00388   Possati, L. M. (2021). Freud and the algorithm: neuropsychoanalysis as a framework to understand artificial general intelligence. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00812-y   Rimbaud, A. (1954). Oeuvres completes. Gallimard.   Sandberg, L. S. (2016). On the argument for (and against) neuropsychoanalysis. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 97(4), 1149–1150. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-8315.12560   Solms, M. (2019). A neuropsychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 39(8), 607–624.   Solms, M., & Turnbull, O. (2018). The brain and the inner world: An introduction to the neuroscience of subjective experience. Routledge.   Vanderveken, Y. (2019). The unconscious and the brain: nothing in common. The argument. New Lacanian School. https://www.amp-nls.org/nls-messager/pipol9-the-argument/   Williams, J. H. G. (2008). Self–other relations in social development and autism: multiple roles for mirror neurons and other brain bases. Autism Research, 1(2), 73–90. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.15   Yovell, Y., Solms, M., & Fotopoulou, A. (2015). The case for neuropsychoanalysis: Why a dialogue with neuroscience is necessary but not sufficient for psychoanalysis. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 96(6), 1515–1553.

Notes

[1] I’m referring here to René Descartes (1637/1996) who performed his epoche, his bracketing of all certainties, from a withdrawal, from “staying shut up … in the stove-heated room where [he] had all these thoughts.” (p. 16).   [2] Traditionally the allegory is used to illustrate the relativism–absolutism debate; see Garrett, 2002.   [3] I am of course alluding to the classic passage in Freud’s “Negation” recounting of a patient reporting a dream, saying, “You ask who this person in the dream can be. It is not my mother!” with Freud replying, “So it is his mother.”   [4] In his argument for the conference Vanderveken (2019) makes some very astute points rejecting the cognitive non-conscious.   [5] See Braunstein (2020).   [6] See Bazan (2011).   [7] Johnston (2008) writes that the “Lacanian Real is simultaneously the positive plenitude of material, bodily being as well as the negative void of absence evading incarnation and defying representation; it both overflows and withdraws from the register of the Symbolic, being a surplus and a deficit all at once” (p.109).   [8] As Solms (2019) argues elsewhere: “The elucidation of these deep evolutionary continuities is not just an academic hobby; it helps us (and helps us help our patients) to better understand why feelings of panic feel the way they do, and what the feelings mean” (190).

Bio

Jan De Vos holds an MA in psychology and a PhD in philosophy and is currently affiliated to Ghent University College. His main interests are the critique of (neuro)psychology, (neuro)psychologisation, and, related to this, the subject of the digital turn. His inspiration is continental philosophy, Freudo-Lacanian theory and ideology critique. His books include The Digitalisation of (Inter)Subjectivity A Psy-critique of the Digital Death Drive (2020), The Metamorphoses of the Brain. Neurologisation and its Discontents (2016) and Psychologisation in Times of Globalisation (2012). http://janrdevos.weebly.com

Publication Date

September 20, 2024